What You Choose
by independentwriter-137
Summary: Based on Heathers the Musical. His presence is never as obvious as Heather Chandler's or Kurt and Ram's. Where Heather is an ever present source of annoyance, JD watches her from the sidelines, at the very edge of her vision and never going any further. Where Kurt and Ram are boisterous laughter and dick jokes, JD is silence. Ghost!JD. Post-musical.


_A/N. So I recently got into the Heathers fandom and I decided to take a crack at writing fanfiction for it. This is a very rough draft that I'll probably end up editing in the future._

 _Anyway, I really wanted to explore the whole "ghost" aspect of the musical and of course, JD and Veronica's relationship because I find it really interesting. Though in a way I guess this is a ship-y fic, I also hope it's made clear here that their relationship isn't healthy and that Veronica could never have saved him from himself. It never could have worked in the canon and the way things turned out is probably one of the better ways it could have ended for Veronica. However, I do believe that under different circumstances, they really could have been great together because JD really, really loved Veronica, so if you want to ship them in a healthy!JDronica AU, then all the power to you!_

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 _-What You Choose-_

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His presence is never as obvious as Heather Chandler's or Kurt and Ram's. Where Heather is an ever present source of annoyance, JD watches her from the sidelines, at the very edge of her vision and never going any further. Where Kurt and Ram are boisterous laughter and dick jokes, JD is silence. The trio never acknowledge JD's presence, but that does little to minimize the fact that he _is_ there. Veronica feels his gaze on her constantly, a prickling on her consciousness even when she's asleep.

It reminds her of when she first saw him, or rather, of when he first saw her in the cafeteria all those months ago. _You've clearly got a soul, you just need to work hard keeping it clean. We're all born marked for evil._ Veronica isn't so sure if she has a soul anymore and if she does, she would hardly call it clean. Being marked for evil, _tainted_ by evil, is something they can agree upon though.

JD never approaches and this is something that puzzles her to no end. Sometimes she'd try to draw him out— _if it's in your way, I'll make you're day_ turned up to full volume when she catches it on TV, a cherry slushie barely touched on her coffee table until all the ice melts. If it fazes him even just a little bit, she'll never know. Every time she tries to chase that tail of a trench coat in her peripheral vision, he skirts away even further.

It's frustrating to say the least. If she was going to be haunted by the ghosts of high school's past, she'd much rather it be him than her accidental murder victims. Veronica stops by a 7/11 on her way home from work to pick up another slushie she knows won't lure JD out of hiding. If it hasn't worked the last dozen times, it probably won't work now, but a girl can hope—even if that hope ends with her pouring the mixture that looks so much like blood down the drain.

"You might as well pour the money directly down the drain," Heather Chandler drawls beside her, somehow propped up against the counter where the slushie machines sit. "And if the money clogs up the drain, well, I'm permanently spewing drain cleaner thanks to a certain someone."

Veronica ignores her. She's not stupid. Talking to ghosts gets her nothing except odd looks. Kurt and Ram are engaged in some sort of shoving match near the cash register and JD skirts around the linoleum isles just outside of her field of vision.

When she goes to pay, she eyes the corn nuts resting on the counter. "BQ! Get the BQ!" she hears Heather yell. To spite her, Veronica adds in a pack of plain corn nuts to her purchase. "Great," Heathers says, "I can't even live vicariously the _proper_ way through you."

Taking her corn nuts and slushie, Veronica exits the 7/11 and walks the short distance left from there to her tiny apartment. It's chilly tonight and she tugs at the scarf around her neck. Kurt and Ram walk ahead of her and she wonders for the umpteenth time if their ghosts ever get cold. Of all her regrets, making them strip down to their underwear is one of her biggest ones—well, aside from killing them in the first place, of course.

Veronica pushes the door open and drops her bag on the small table next to the door, leaving the slushie on the coffee table once again and dumping the corn nuts somewhere in the kitchen. Flopping down face-first on her bed, she lets out a tired groan. She turns her head slightly to see that it's a little past midnight. From this angle, she can see the pile of empty slushie cups growing in her trashcan. The one on the coffee table is ignored, again, and his gaze burns like the licks of heat on her face the day the bomb went off.

Sixteen months of waiting and she's had enough.

"Heather, I really need you, Kurt, and Ram to go wherever you guys go when you leave me alone," Veronica said, sitting back up on her bed.

Forever seventeen and perfectly made up, Heather raises a carefully shaped eyebrow at her. "God, Veronica, it's about time you grew a pair," she said, then turned her attention to Kurt and Ram. "Let's go, boys. Veronica need some alone time with Red Dawn."

Kurt and Ram exchange amused giggles and wink suggestively at Veronica, but stop immediately once Heather fixes her glare on them. Then, with a twirl of a skirt, Heather disappeared to wherever she goes when she doesn't feel like gracing Veronica with her presence, taking Kurt and Ram with her.

"I know you're there," Veronica says, her voice reaching whichever corner of her tiny apartment that JD decided to hole himself up in this time. "This is ridiculous, JD. It's been months. I'm tired, aren't you?"

His boots appear to her first, followed by that damn trench coat. His steps are slow and hesitant, but it's the closest he's come to her since he took away that bomb. "Dreadful etiquette, I know," he says and it's every bit as smooth and comforting as she remembers it to be.

She meets his eyes and it's like she's running into him at 7/11 again. The mania that burned in them when he killed Kurt and Ram is gone. The anger that simmered when she wrestled him for the gun has been replaced by something softer. It reminds her of the look on his face when she crawled through his window, telling him he was beautiful.

And he is. Three murders, a bomb, and sixteen months later, he still looks beautiful. It seems he's still finding fresh ways to break her heart.

"Why didn't you ever say anything to me?" she asked, drinking in the sight of him. "Is it because you blame me for not saving you?" she blurts out.

He tilts his head to the side as if the very thought seemed to confuse him. "Why would I blame you?"

"Because I shot you. Because I let you stay with the bomb. Because I _couldn't_ save you," she says, her voice cracking and eyes watering.

He takes another step closer and Veronica doesn't dare to move for fear that he'll disappear again. "Veronica, nothing could have saved me. I was beyond help long before you met me. Not even you could have changed that," he said it slowly, as if she were a child and he was afraid she wouldn't understand.

"I didn't try hard enough," she argued.

"It wasn't your job to fix me."

"Then why?" she asks.

JD kneels in front of her, so his eyes are level with hers. She wants to reach out, to touch him, but she knows she'll come up with nothing but air. "Would you believe me if I said I was embarrassed?"

She let out a short bark of laughter. "No."

A trace of a smile appeared on his face before it faded just as quickly as it appeared. "Nothing has changed, Veronica. I am damaged, far too damaged. Keeping my distance is the only way I can keep you safe from me," he said.

Her sadness gives way to anger and she lashes out at him in a way she never get the chance to when he was alive. "Well congratulations for showing such restraint on my behalf! Ever occurred to you that you could have done that when you were _alive?_ Why couldn't we just be seventeen, JD? You promised me. We had so many plans. We could have done so much together. You wanted it too, I know you did or was that another case of _ich luge?_ "

He shakes his head vehemently and spread his hands as if to ward off her accusations. "I wanted it more than anything. A life with you was more than I could have hoped for, but even you must know by now that we were never going to have that. I wasn't—I'm _still_ not capable of that, Veronica. I wasn't well. I haven't been for a long time."

"I wish we'd met earlier," she says, imagining not for the first time what life would have been like if he had moved to Sherwood earlier. She could have been there when his mom died, held his hand as cried and talked about how his mother waved at him. She could have supported him when his dad didn't, the same way she cared for Martha whenever she was bullied in school. Maybe she could've seen the warning signs before they became something permanent. Maybe she could've gotten him the help he needed. Maybe all he needed was someone after his mom died. If they had met earlier, maybe she could've been that someone.

"We could've shared so many slushies together," JD said and it made Veronica laugh at the innocence behind the idea. Two kids goofing around at a 7/11, lips stained cherry and riding a sugar rush. The thought makes her laugh even harder until she's gasping for air and her chest starts to heave when her laughter turned to sobs. "I could have been good with you," he whispered.

But that's the way life is, isn't it? What was that that Kurt Cobain said? That no one dies a virgin because life screws us all? Veronica could drown herself in what if's. It doesn't change what _did_ happen. It doesn't change the way neglect and loneliness messed up JD so badly that he let Heather Chandler swallow drain cleaner and shot Kurt and Ram in cold blood. It doesn't change the fact that JD had done the inexcusable without any hint of remorse. It doesn't change the fact that he was beyond saving long before he stepped foot in Sherwood, Ohio, that he was destined to be his own destruction in the form of a bomb strapped to his chest.

"I can't move on, JD," she says, wiping her face on her scarf and not caring about the tear stains she'll leave on it. "I can't forget and get on with my life when I've got four ghosts reminding me of everything I did and everything I lost."

JD's expression is both sympathetic and pitying, as if he knows something that she does not. It makes her frown and look at him in silent question.

He runs his hands through his hair in a painfully familiar gesture before wetting his lips to speak. "Veronica," he says, voice quiet and rough. "We aren't ghosts."

"I don't understand."

He smiles at her then, wide enough to show his teeth, but not enough to reach his eyes. "We're all in your head. We are the parts of yourself that you need to forgive."

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 _A/N. So there you have it! My Heathers one-shot! I hope you guys enjoyed my contribution to this fandom :)_

 _Leave a review?_

 _-Indy_


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